Dear Ms Appelbaum,

Sorry, but you seem to have missed the point when you dismiss Britains for being overly emotive on Diana's death. Where were you the night Diana took Britain and the world on a walking tour of a field of landmines? Who else in the world had the power to reverse their out-of-control use?

The supposedly shockingly unfamiliar outpouring of emotion that englufed Britain when Diana died, wasn't as much to do with Diana the mother, princess, myth; it was all about the promising future Britain saw disappear right in front of their eyes, the night she died.

Diana and her entourage of tabloids, broadsheets, broadcasters, mine sweepers, & AIDS charities, were taking the country by storm into new and unfamiliar - but exceedingly compelling - terrain.

Two nights of television in Britain are forever etched in my memory (I lived there from 1985-2001). First came her interview with Martin Bashir in which she put closure on her marriage. Seeing her composure, her careful restructuring of her public persona, succeeded in improving her standing. She got high marks that night. Months later, we watched, gobsmacked, as she took her team of journalists through minefields in Angola and Bosnia, and visited limbless people in hospitals. No one had the power to influence and reverse the use of landmines until then, but in the ten years since her very short lived and only newly started campaign, landmines have become the pariah of weapons, and have declined rapidly.

After that night, the Purpose of Diana sprang to life and Britain couldn't help but notice. Suddenly it became clear that she had found the key to manipulating her fame, image, breeding in a way that put other stars to shame. Her popularity soared. After that, no one could say quite where Diana would appear next, or what she'd be campaigning for, or who she'd be with. But for the first time, those of us who never took notice, watched with interest and growing respect.

Finally, - if you remember - Tony Blair had just been elected and the country was electrified with anticipation for change. The combination of him as the new, young prime minister and Diana, forged an imagined partnership that knew no limits. Somehow the idea of Blair without Diana was unthinkable. As for the Dodi-mania that summer, there's rarely anything for tabloids to write about in the summer apart from celebrities, and because of the groundswell in her popularity by then, the papers couldn't get enough.

So the grief was not so much for the death of a princess, as for a future that Britain would never have a chance to play out.

Dual Cit

Just think that if Diana had stepped on a land mine just how many media would have also been killed.

Diana did much for charity but made damn sure that everybody else knew about it.

people are still getting killed or crippled by land mines and AIDs is still running rampant around the globe. nice to see that she made a difference.

A british commentator, Alan Coren, recently made the point (mostly overlooked) that back in 1997 the "love affair between Diana and the British public was increasingly coming to an end, mostly thanks to her antics with Dodi and as more tales of of her sexual adventures were aired.

For ther children's sake, it would have been better had she lived but for the rest of us, it wouldn't have mattered either way. She would have become increasingly irrelevent and more embarassing.

I totally agree with Dual Cit. Diana was a dream that could become a reality for the future Queen of England.

No one is perfect but for the Royal Family she came close, certainly her successor does not.

Prince Charles' Uncle abdicated for love -- if he feels that way about Camilla so should he or pass the flame (crown) to his eldest son.

This is one Canadian who sorely misses a young and vibrant woman who didn't reach her potential through fateful circumstances.

I remember a different public performance caught on video. Diana has gone to a gym. As she comes out, still wearing her spandex workout clothes, the paparazzi are waiting. Clutching her bag, she cringes from the cameras and clambers into the waiting car.

Poor Di, hunted by those bastards who won't leave her alone. Nice bum, though. And why, when she could have had any facilities she wanted installed at Kensington Palace, was she pretending to live like an ordinary working girl by going to a public gym? It isn't exactly Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess, but there's a resemblance.

and hated Churchill?